


Protector of the Rings

by Mertiya



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Sappy, Tearjerker, assume this takes place sometime in the nebulous time around PLB, could be a bit later, jace's past, lots of feels, probably an au, uncharted realms style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 03:52:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4206909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a disastrous planeswalk, Jace finds himself in a place that seems tantalizingly familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Protector of the Rings

**Author's Note:**

> This was a bit of an exercise for me. It's actually sort of a mock Uncharted Realms, complete with card "spoiler" and all. Many thanks to flavoracle.tumblr.com for doing most of the design on said spoiler.

            Jace landed with a heavy jolt, head reeling.  His stomach flip-flopping, he dropped to his knees and vomited up the salad he had had for dinner with Lavinia.  For several minutes, he was entirely occupied with emptying his stomach, but, eventually, he managed to look up wearily.

            He had no idea where he was.  He had left Ravnica after hearing some disturbing rumors about the creatures he had seen evidence of on Zendikar, had tracked the rumors to a particular plane he had visited before, had headed for that plane—and found nothing. The Eternities in the area were surging with dissonance and chaos, but there was no reality there for him to land on, and he had nearly been consumed in the ravaging tumult. Only a quick flicker of familiarity from somewhere—not “nearby”, because there was no sense of nearness or farness within the Eternities, but somewhere he could sense—had been enough to save him.

            He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, giving himself a moment to look around and calm down before he tried to make his way back to Ravnica. The strange sense of familiarity intensified as the smell of bile cleared from his nostrils to be replaced by the stinging, acrid smell of smoke and oil.  Gazing out across the landscape, he saw a ravaged countryside with flickering fires and smoke rising from the meager remnants of forests. Towering over it were a number of vast circles, sparking and crackling in places with mana and lightning.

            _The mage-rings_. The thought floated up, unbidden, from somewhere in Jace’s subconscious.  It seemed eerily familiar, but unconnected to anything that his mind told him that he had experienced, although he knew all-too-well that that meant very little.

            Something drew him to start walking toward the nearest structure, steps slow and weary. A commotion suddenly sparking at its base drew his attention.  A young girl in a short tunic and dark leggings stood in a defensive posture, a bright white shield holding back the swords of three people in muddy uniforms. Jace, guiltily peering into their minds, found anger, confusion, and a desire to hurt someone. Bullies.  Signed up for the Mage War in the last few weeks, hurt and in pain, and wanting to take out their losses on the nearest available target.

            Jace was briefly tempted to teach them a lesson in humility, but he was tired and recognized that the impulse would likely lead to nothing good in the future, so he contented himself with an illusion of soldiers from the opposing army. Ten new muddy figures in slightly different-colored uniforms sprang up, shouting to the real soldiers to leave or die.

            They scattered almost immediately, as Jace had expected.  The girl cringed backward behind her shield, trembling slightly, but her body language was defiant.  Jace didn’t try to look into her mind, preferring to respect her privacy.  He let the illusions flicker and fade, and watched as she turned in confusion from side to side, letting her lower the shield before stepping toward her himself.

            Immediately, the alertness—the fear—came back, and she moved her hands. Jace felt her feebly trying to reach for white mana, but she must have been too tired to hold onto it, because she folded forward.  “Back off,” she said fiercely.  “I’m not doing anything wrong.  Just trying to eat.”

            “It’s all right,” Jace said soothingly, holding his hands up, palm-up to show he held no weapons.  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

            She stared at him suspiciously, but the tension eased slightly in her limbs. “Then what are you doing here?” she asked.

            “I’m a traveler,” Jace said carefully.  “I saw that those soldiers were harassing you, so I came to help.”

            “Hm,” the girl said.  “Thanks, then.” She stared at him for a moment longer. “Come back to camp with me,” she continued abruptly.  Again, Jace was tempted to peer into her head and make sure she wasn’t trying to lead him into a trap, but he didn’t quite like to.  His stomach was beginning to settle, and the moisture in the air carried mana that was revitalizing him.  If it _was_ a trap, he should be able to planeswalk away—and he was curious about this place.  About why it called to him so strongly. Why it felt so oddly familiar.

            “All right,” he agreed, and followed her into the base of the ring.

            It took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the dim light, and he shuffled along and banged his shins into a high, metal staircase. The girl beside him snickered, and he paused for a moment.  As the outline of the room came into focus, he saw that she had put on a pair of heavy goggles that he suspected mitigated the darkness for her. “I see you’ve laid clever traps to dissuade intruders,” he said mildly, eying the debris that littered the staircase, and the naked wires poking out of the walls that occasionally spat sparks.

            The girl chuckled again, but headed up the staircase ahead of him. Jace followed her, a headache blossoming behind his eyes, along with a feeling of unease. This wasn’t exhaustion—this was something else.  Every time he stared straight ahead, the shadows seemed to lift and form into flickering images, but when he turned to the side, they broke apart into dark fragments once again.

            After several flights, the stairs angled abruptly in the opposite direction, tracing the inside of the ring with a quick twist.  Jace’s head was aching more by the time they reached a hatch where the ceiling of the ring dipped down to their heads.

            “I hope you’re not scared of heights,” the girl said, reaching up and yanking the trap-door open.  “You don’t want to fall off.”  She jumped for the edge of the hatch and scrambled out.  Jace followed, somewhat more slowly, standing gingerly after he hauled himself over the lip.

            For a moment, he was standing on a platform, staring out across the landscape and the belly of the ring below.  Then, the world swayed sickeningly.  Jace was staring down at—a young boy, eyes glowing bright blue, clinging desperately to the edge.  Jace reached for his hand—and he was staring up from the same position.  His eyes slammed shut, his stomach heaving again, breath ragged in his ears.

            “You okay?  Are you actually scared of heights?”  The girl again, her voice yanking him out of—

            --the past.  A memory. _A memory_.  As soon as he realized what it was, Jace reached for it, the tendrils of his mind clutching desperately after it, but the images dissipated like smoke in the wind.

            Even without them, though, the realization had shaken him to the core. He knew this place. He didn’t know how, but he had been here—and not recently, he was almost positive. 

            “Hey, you okay?” the girl asked again.

            Jace choked on the words at first, then managed to respond, though his voice was shaking.  “Yes. I—fine.  F-fine.”

            More determined than ever to explore this place, he stumbled after her.

            As they finished crossing the platform, the girl paused, put her fingers to her lips, and blew, a sharp, piercing whistle.  The formerly-empty area was suddenly swarming with people, most of them children or teenagers, a few young adults. Jace took half a step back, but he had little time to react as they slammed his hands behind him and pushed him to his knees.  Jace tried to move and found that metallic cuffs were holding his hands in place and—he suddenly started struggling in earnest—cutting off his connection to his mana.

            “Sorry,” the girl he had rescued said to him.  “But you might be a spy.  We have to ask Ranna.”

            The name was a like a gong going off in Jace’s head, and, as he blinked in confusion again, the door at the other end of the platform opened, and a woman stepped out. 

            She was gaunt, almost emaciated, her greying hair pulled back in a tight braid. She wore a pair of oil-stained trousers and light, padded armor with glowing runes etched across the chest. Jace’s headache intensified, pounding behind his eyes.  A faint sheen of blue flickered across his vision.

            The woman—Ranna—walked calmly across the platform.  “I’m sorry,” she said politely.  “We have to take care when strangers enter the mage-rings.  Do you mind letting me—” She broke off, eyes widening as she leaned toward him. _It can’t be_.  _Jace?_   The thought was loud, clumsy, echoing in his aching head.

            “How do you know my name?”  Jace asked, suddenly squinting through a strange double-vision.  Was her hair grey, or was it brown?

            Her hand flew to her mouth.

            “Ranna? Do you _know_ him?” asked the girl who had escorted him up.

            Why was the name so familiar?  Why did he feel as if he’d seen her before?  Why was the pain in her voice and the pain in her heart pounding into Jace’s head so hard, like a betrayal—a betrayal of a promise—

            She was kneeling in front of him, reaching out with a shaking hand to touch his cheek, gently, afraid.  “What did Alhammarret do to you?” she asked, her mouth twitching and dancing with grief.

            _I’ll come back.  I promise_.

            Jace squinted at her.  “He—I—” his voice was shaking.  She knew about Alhammarret.  She was older than Jace—at least twenty years older.  He knew this place.  The answer to the puzzle was right there, but he couldn’t bear to look at it. “Let me go,” he whispered. “I have to leave, they’ll arrest me, I killed him, I—”  Too many images, too many impressions, all whirling together in his head.

            “Ten years,” Ranna said softly, brushing his hair back from his forehead. “Ten years, Jace.”

            Ten years.  All the continuous memories that Jace had.  Before that—just chopped up impressions.  Alhammarret. Silmot’s Crossing. Sitting on a bed, a murmured conversation with a woman whose face was blurred and indistinct in Jace’s mind.  Whose voice—

            A murmured sentence that Jace had not heard in a decade flung itself up out of the mists of his memory.  “You said—you said I wasn’t a freak,” he mumbled.  “You said I was perfect and—” _I love you, no matter what_.  “I—I don’t have many memories from before I was fifteen. Mother.”  The word felt strange and hollow and almost wrong in his mouth.

            “Oh, Jace.” 

            He had thought there was no one.  Jace remembered the dark days after Liliana had left him, lying in his small apartment in Ravnica and believing with all his heart that not one person in the world had ever—would ever—love him for who he was. Unconditionally. He had forgotten her. And however that had happened—whether Jace had done it to himself, or whether something else had ripped the memories from him—it was a betrayal.

            “I’m so sorry,” Jace whispered, his voice shaking, as he leaned forward. “I’m so sorry.”

            “Shhhh,” Ranna pulled him forward into a clumsy embrace, and her scent—oil and water and smoke—was still familiar, was enough to call up some brief mental images that slipped away again quickly.  “Shhhh, Jace.  I still love you.  You’re still perfect.”

            “I forgot, how could I,” he said—to her or to himself, he wasn’t certain. “I said I would come back, and I didn’t.”

            “You’re home, you’re safe.  You’re safe.  You did come back. You’re here now. My perfect little boy all grown up.”  She smiled through the tears in her eyes.  “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?  I thought you were dead, Jace.”

            So blunt.  He was too tired, couldn’t bear to ask.  He opened her mind and looked in.  He had a father, five years dead.  No siblings. Ranna was not a mother anymore, unless you counted the children of the mage-rings.  Orphaned children and young adults had made Silmot’s Crossing a home, and she protected them all from the soldiers and the petty infighting, making sure they got food and love and had a place to sleep. She kept parts of the mage-ring running herself, forging out a life on a plane that had broken in the wake of a civil war.  Mostly, she took in strays because that was the kind of person she was.  Because she liked to help and she hated bullies—that made him smile.  But there was that little undercurrent of pain—had she failed her own son?

            _No_ , Jace said fiercely. _No, never._

            Then he realized she would know he had been in her head, and he cringed back. An invasion of privacy, and one he could not justify and could not explain.  But she just looked at him and smiled and hugged him again. “I love you,” she said. “You are my child, and you are perfect.”

            _And you are loved_. She had pushed that thought toward his head as hard as she could, and Jace shut his eyes and let the feeling wash over him.

            _You are loved._


End file.
